Nigerian Cinema Spotlighted at the Taste of Home: African Cinema Series Screening

The Screen in Transit has curated a five-week screening in collaboration with the London Performance Studios. Themed A Taste of Home, the five-week screening will journey through stories from the African continent, devised by filmmaker Ifeoluwa Olutayo and Raphel Famotibe, with free screenings every Wednesday throughout April. 

Famotibe is a South East London–born artist working across acting, writing, directing, and producing. He trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts (RADA) and works across stage and screen. As an award-winning actor, his screen work includes roles in many critically acclaimed projects, and he recently appeared in the TV series The Night Manager. On stage, he has performed at leading venues in the UK, including the National Theatre. Olutayo is an award-winning writer, film programmer and filmmaker and an avid lover of cinema, books and music. He has worked in film archiving practices and approaches, coordinating The Post-Memory, Post-Archive project with the Goethe Institute in Lagos, Nigeria. He is also the moderator at WAFFLENSCREAM, Lagos Home Movie Film Club, and co-founder of The Screen in Transit, a nomadic micro-cinema collective.

The Screen in Transit

The screening which will hold from 1st to  29 April, 2026 will feature screening of short and feature films from Nigeria and neighbouring African countries. The first week is titled Meaningless Gains: Capitalist Expansion & Ecological Loss and  Lemohang Jeremiah Mosese’s This Is Not a Burial, It’s a Resurrection, Peace Olatunji’s The Sands of Time, and Okwudini Noah and Prince Uhunoma Charles’s The Weight of Small Things will be shown. The opening night of the screening series focuses on ecological loss caused by capitalist extraction, and how this impacts the connection people have with their land. For the second week, The Esiri Brothers’s Eyimofe and Mati Diop’s Atlantique will be showing under the Searching for Home in the Unfamiliar: Immigration & Crossing Over programme. 

The third week themed Building an Industry with Nothing: The Global Reach of Nollywood will be showing Ben Addleman & Samir Mallal’s Nollywood Babylon by Ben Addleman & Samir Mallal and  Jamie Meltzer’s Welcome to Nollywood. This double feature celebrates the rise of Nollywood as a testament to Nigerian ingenuity, exploring its industrial practices, production models, global circulation, and informal economies. Together, the films examine how an industry born out of scarcity became a cultural and economic powerhouse, and what its success can teach us about creativity, resilience, and the future of global cinema.

Ife Olutayo

The Black Bourgeoisie: Neocolonial Realities & Corruption is the theme  of the fourth week and Ousmane Sembène’s Xala and Wisdom Deji-Folutile’s Able Leader will be presented. The screening will examine the complexities of post-independence Africa, exposing failures at the intersections of corruption, toxic masculinity, and political power held by the elite. Sembène’s satirical masterpiece Xala from 1975 and Deji-Folutile’s short Able Leader from 2024 critique how neocolonial structures and internalised oppression perpetuate systemic dysfunction within African societies.

The final week is titled The Indie Scene in Nigeria: A Shorts Programme. The screening is dedicated to celebrating the Nigerian independent film scene, with six shorts by filmmakers and artists from across the country. Through a varied lens, the works reclaim suppressed histories, highlight marginalised viewpoints and find joy and resilience in the everyday. The selected short films include Amanda Madumere’s A Body in Metaphor, Ajay Abalaka’s Girl-Boy, Khalil Agboola’s Happy Times, Ugo Azuya’s Swimming in a Sea of Trauma, Lanaire Aderemi’s Record Found Here, and Dika Ofoma’s  God’s Wife. 

When quizzed about what guided the programming, Olutayo mentioned that the prior screenings and programming of Screen in Transit was a major influence. Globally, cinema is seen as an experience of entertainment. But, Olutayo and the Screen in Transit team feel that cinema offers more than entertainment. “It was important to show a programme with urgent and eminent matters. It was an opportunity to show films, discuss them, and think of solutions to the world’s problems. Additionally, we want people to learn more about the Nigerian scene through the programming. 

Raphel Famotibe

That the programming and its curated films is political is hinged on the interest of the Screen in Transit team to curate a critical audience. The pioneering African filmmakers were conscious of the potency of cinema for political education. Filmmakers like Ousmane Sembène, Djibril Diop Mambéty, Haile Gerima, Souleymane Cissé, Tunde Kelani, Abderrahmane Sissako, and others exploited and explored cinema’s role as a tool for political education. “Screen in Transit is trying to ensure that people are aware of the potency of cinema and its innate ability to contribute to societal and political topics. We want to cultivate a more critical audience that understands the potency of cinema to contribute to urgent issues,” Olutayo shared. 

The programme is led mainly by the spirit and energy of Nigerian cinema. Bringing together a mix of features and short films, the programme explores what “home” means across borders, generations, and lived experiences. These films celebrate the richness and complexity of African storytelling, representing a diverse array of pioneering and contemporary narratives from the continent. The screening will be followed by post-screening conversations with Olutayo and Famotibe.